Monday 13 May 2002

We are back at Fairview to record our new album. A popular music business clichι is to talk about 'difficult second album' syndrome – a band has made its first album, recorded all its best songs, and is now struggling to come up with as good material for the second. Every time we record we talk about the difficult third, fourth, fifth, six albums. This is our difficult seventh album. I never thought we would go on so long, but then what do I know?

Seven years after walking out of the Fairview door on finishing Folk Songs we turn up at 10 o'clock the first morning, and it's just like coming back the next day. At first sight nothing has changed. There is still the truly awful door sign, including badly drawn 40s microphone and stand with some kind of speaker and possibly phonogram, and some random musical notes that don't formulate any tune (a graphic designer has tried to depict 'music'); still the malfunctioning television; and still the lack of snooker room. However, the atmosphere has distinctly improved since John Spence stopped smoking (although it's probably been improved for the last seven years without benefiting us). There are pictures on the previously bare walls, of people with tenuous connections with the studio who didn't record there (I'm sure Charlie Watts and Jimi Hendrix did their best work elsewhere), and a bit of a nouveau hippy American-Indian vibe, in the form of some tie-dyed drapes, feathers, and a oil wheel. These, and the pictures, are attributable to new co-owner Andy, who generously picked us up at Hull station last night and deposited us in our resting place for the session, a bed-and-breakfast in Cottingham.

Andy is delighted to hear that our backing vocalist is soap star Katherine Dow Blyton (he's a big fan), and puts in generous amounts of 'hanging around' time at the studio, listening in, being generally encouraging, and showing us how to use his Marshall amplifier and amazing pedal board and effects Pod – these come free with the studio. When Kath comes for her recording day, Andy is present throughout, and I wonder whether his earlier stints were merely an elaborate subterfuge, so that we don't find his presence on Kath's vocal day disproportionate.

John has acquired an irritating gadget of his own, a little studio toy which plays an annoying tune, with (or without) the aid of a miniature violin bow. This reminds me that studio humour is about to kick in, as a long series of often-repeated jokes start to re-emerge in the collective memory, are dusted down, and wheeled out one more time. Or actually, several more times.

Fatally we are also filming the session. There is a law that people at parties group themselves with arms round each other's shoulders, pull comedy faces, hold up drinks and have red eyes whenever a camera is pulled out. With a video recorder in the studio, the rule is that people make hippy peace signs, stick their tongues out very close to the camera, swear a lot, and try to pretend that they are acting naturally. Unfortunately for our film the first couple of hours are spent tinkering around with drums and microphones as John sets up to record the drums and bass. Apart from John expressing astonishment that Martin's drum skins are the same as in 1995, nothing untoward, nor indeed interesting, makes it onto film.

We had thought of doing a studio demo of the album to let John hear the songs, and for practice in recording again after several years off. In the end we didn't, and in fact the whole recording experience comes back to us very quickly. Today we get through seven songs, recording bass and drums for Beautiful To Me, So You Say, The Story Of My Life, Special You, And Start Again, When The Sun Shines and Schooldays, with a guide guitar and guide vocal part which will be replaced later. We got stuck with the rhythm of the first Middle 8 of Schooldays and decided to come back to it tomorrow.

Apart from the studio, there isn't a lot to do in Willerby. Lunch is a walk to the supermarket across the road, and a usually unhealthy snack. Whilst being in the studio itself is wonderful, the rest of the experience is profoundly depressing. We work 'sensible' hours in the studio, 10 am to 8 pm, which helps keep everyone sane, especially John who has been doing this for years and is remarkably sane considering he has spent most of those years in the company of bands. There's not a lot to do to fill the early mornings and evenings, although there's a pub near the studio where we go this evening to evaluate progress. I like being away less and less, but would like to be in the studio much more often. Anyway, we've made a good start so I'm happy.

Tuesday 14 May 2002

For this session, we've tried to improve John's level of job satisfaction and personal fulfilment by giving him lyric sheets so that he can make notes as the vocals are recorded, and lists of instrumentation for all the songs. John, being a fairly laid-back sort of individual, pretends that these make absolutely no difference to the quality of his life, because he has automatic mental recall of every piece of information ever relayed, or even intimated, to him. Myself, being an inveterate organiser and writer-up of things, cannot understand how this can be the case.

However, within a few hours, the instrumentation lists are being hung up on the walls around the mixing room and being crossed off as parts are recorded to a quality that John deems acceptable. The lyric sheets won't be relevant until later, but still afford plenty of amusement. John cannot yet admit that these developments represent any improvement to the service we provide, but secretly we all know the truth.

It also emerges during these sessions that John is uncle to David Prutton, the Nottingham Forest and England under-21 midfielder, and that John taught him all he knew (about studio engineering, rather than football).

By an amazing aural illusion, the problem with Schooldays didn't sound like a problem when we came back in this morning. A perfect example of studio madness, when you start hearing things that aren't really there, or develop an obsession or perfectionism which isn't compatible with the amount of time we have in the studio. We kept going with drums and bass, and nailed This Is The Start, No Regrets, Over The Hills, The Avenues and Village In My Mind.

Today's special problem was Over The Hills. This song has a time change between the verses and the links, and we just couldn't get it. We'd got it in rehearsal, but that's without playing against the metronomic background click we work to in the studio. For the first time I felt we'd under-prepared, and also felt angry and frustrated because I thought everyone had got it right enough in rehearsal to be able to reproduce it in performance. We spent about three hours just trying to get this sorted out, and eventually decided to take a break and come back to it feeling a bit more relaxed and refreshed. In the end not a lot changed, and I felt we ended up with a rhythmic change you would notice if you knew it was there, but not otherwise.

We did the two fretless bass songs (Village In My Mind and It Passed Me By) last, and Edwin had some tuning problems with It Passed Me By. He was scheduled to leave at the end of today, so we agreed that he'd come back on Saturday to get it right.

For the first time on the session (and it's only the second day) I felt we were losing time, as I'd expected to start on guitar parts by mid afternoon. I'm hoping we can record the vocals as we go along, rather than leave them all to the end. Leaving it all to the last recording day puts enormous pressure on to get it right, and just to keep the voice going long enough to record an album's worth of songs. As of today, we have no vocals down.

Wednesday 15 May 2002

Having an hour to kill between having breakfast at the B & B, and arriving at the studio for John's 'sensible' start time, I go back to my room and turn on the television. Kilroy is on. I've come to Kilroy the wrong way round. Never having seen him before, I watched Alistair McGowan's impression of him and found it hilarious. Now I'm watching Kilroy himself and start to get the joke. McGowan has a poem about turning into your father, and I'm starting to do this as I shout at the TV just as my dad used to. Usually it's news reporters and documentary presenters, and now it's Kilroy. I hate everything about his programme and the people on it, with their psychotherapeutic language and citizen's rights. Thankfully, there's usually a knock on the door around 9.30 am and it's time to go to the studio.

The test copy of Best Of Friends has arrived, and I'm checking it on my headphones. Inevitably it sounds great, so I'm suspicious.

Today we get a lot done. We're starting on guitar, which means I'm on at last. Acoustic, rhythm guitar parts, some 12-string acoustic, and electric guitar parts go down. Edwin has gone back to London having put down the bass parts, so we're down to Martin and me, and John, with occasional appearances from Andy. I'm looking forward to Jon Kirby, Richard Buckton, Kath and trumpeter Al Wood arriving to do their parts, as it keeps things entertaining, and of course is another opportunity to recycle all the old and new (but mostly old) studio jokes.

Today we put cymbals on It Passed Me By, congas on So You Say, Village In My Mind and When The Sun Shines, acoustic guitar on Beautiful To Me, So You Say, Special You, And Start Again, Over The Hills, Village In My Mind, and The Story Of My Life, 12-string on So You Say, Special You, And Start Again and Village In My Mind, and electric guitar on Village In My Mind, When The Sun Shines, This Is The Start, Schooldays and The Avenues. It's all sounding very good.

Studio madness has started to creep in, and Village In My Mind has become Spillage Of My Wine, or Image Of My Pint.

Thursday 16 May 2002

Today is Richard Buckton day. Richard is also Richard Kane, the bass player from Silversun, who has played guitar with us since 1991 when he did a couple of parts on Songs Without Tears. He's one of those guitarists who can play anything from a set of chords, and it's usually brilliant.

Today also, I walked to the studio from the B & B. It was a beautiful early summer early morning, and took an hour. It set me up for a very good day, and I felt that everything would go right, which it pretty much did.

Richard phoned to say his train connection wasn't actually going to happen, so we did a few things before he arrived. Then when he arrived we got through a lot of work very quickly, and he added a lot to all the songs he played on. We'd worked out a few things in advance, and a lot just appeared on the day. New parts for The Avenues and When The Sun Shines made a big difference to the songs.

Andy's pedal board is a real find. Most of the items on it are new to me, or rather old, as they predate most of the pedals I bought in the 80s and 90s. You need to try all of them out to find out what they do, as they don't seem to correspond to current pedals. In particular there's one with a sticker of Hendrix on which seems to do nothing at all except remind you of Hendrix. Richard quickly got the best use out of the board, and I started experimenting once he'd gone, getting a great sound for the picking electric guitar part on Beautiful To Me.

It's always been my ambition to get the vocals done as we go along, to relieve pressure on the end of the session, and to avoid the phenomenon of having to do somewhere between twelve and seventeen vocals in a single day. Apart from anything else, doing it that way you get through an awful lot of bottled water.

By now we're running slightly behind time, so inevitably vocals haven't happened until now. At the end of the day we make a start and I get down the vocals for Beautiful To Me, So You say and The Story Of My Life straight off. I usually reckon on an average hour for each vocal, and this was much quicker. Additionally the quality was good so I ended the day tired and happy.

It's been an excellent day. Richard and I share a similar sense of humour so there was a lot of joking going on, and we've ended up with with some excellent guitar parts, and a scorching solo for This Is The Start which is useful as it kicks off the album.

What did we get done today? My electric guitar part on No Regrets and Beautiful To Me, Richard's electric guitar on Special You, When The Sun Shines, This Is The Start, Schooldays, The Avenues, And Start Again and The Story Of My Life, vocals on Beautiful To Me, So You Say and The Story Of My Life, congas on And Start Again, and cymbals on Village In My Mind.

Martin and I decided to treat ourselves to a taxi back to the B & B.

Friday 17 May 2002

Having got a taste for taxis, we got one in to the studio this morning. Al Wood, our trumpeter, was waiting. Al's background is jazz, which means he can play anything he is asked to play. The first time we met him, when we were recording Bluishness, he also proved himself capable of eating anything he was asked to eat, in that instance a very large curry whose special memory lingered in the studio for a good while afterwards.

The trumpet parts took a long long time. This was partly because, although we're not using trumpet on many songs, those songs have brass parts either stacked up on top of each other, or fairly demanding solos. The Story Of My Life developed a brass section fairly late in its life, and the danger of taking a long long time is that the trumpeter's 'lip' starts to go, meaning that we'd have to pack up and come back another time for the trumpet parts. It was also partly because Al hadn't done a lot of studio work since last recording with us. We got The Story Of My Life and moved on to the riff and solo parts of This Is The Start. We're undecided between making this a lead guitar feature or a trumpet part, so we're recording both and making the decision at the mixing stage. The solo for This Is The Start offers us a good contrast with Richard's guitar solo, being a jazzy, Tijuana brass type take.

For the first time we're using flute, which Al also plays, and got a Latin-ish, improvised part for So You Say, which embellishes the chords beautifully, and lightens up the whole song.

Kath arrived to do her singing, but we'd overrun on the brass so decided to take a lunch break. This enabled Andy to embark on a question and answer session with the soap star, becoming increasingly wide-eyed and tongue-tied as he got through the questions. The interrogation was wrapped up with a promise of a signed photograph at some future date.

Because Kath is not a trained singer, but nevertheless a very good one, it can be difficult to give feedback on her recording. She'll take our word for it if something is sharp or flat, too slow or too fast, but doesn't know technically what to do about it, which means developing another language for communicating with her. So some parts took a long time, others were very quick. Generally the sound was very good, especially since Kath has done very little singing since the Folk Songs session. When The Sun Shines and the verse of This Is The Start took longest. We had thought about adding a high, bluesy part to the final chorus of Beautiful To Me, but decided not to as it already sounded beautiful to us enough.

We also got Kath to do a vocal phrase for the Southbeach single – there's a track called Enjoy where we need a real live vocal rather than a sample.

Another good day, and I walked back to the B & B in an hour. Called Jon Kirby about tomorrow, and Richard and Kath about yesterday and today respectively.

Today we have done trumpet parts for The Story Of My Life, And Start Again, No Regrets, This Is The Start, flute on So You Say, and female vocals on The Story Of My Life, When The Sun Shines, This Is The Start, The Avenues, Village In My Mind and Special You.

Saturday 18 May 2002

Jon Kirby phoned in to say he would be late, so we got on with guitar part of And Start Again.

Jon arrived, and we started worked through keyboard parts. Mostly got them fairly quickly although got held up on those with keyboard and string parts like When The Sun Shines, and two with Hammond organ parts. Took a long time to get Schooldays, as Jon couldn't get a take he was happy with. Often we'll get the best take during the run-through, then Jon will be determined that there's a better one to be had and starts to get frustrated.

Particularly good were Village In My Mind and It Passed Me By, which were very atmospheric, and The Avenues, where we added a Hammond part we hadn't planned on, making it sound massive.

Edwin came back to put right the bass part on It Passed Me By. Because it's on fretless bass, and we'd recorded against a bare picking guitar part there hadn't been a lot to pitch the notes against and there had been some tuning problems. So this time we put down a string part so there were constant chord to play against, and it worked perfectly. We didn't quite get the bell sound I wanted for And Start Again. Had wanted a single church bell to sample and play the descending scale to, but John had only actually got a peal of bells, so we had to find a sound from among his set of samples that most closely matched what we were after.

In another example of bad studio wit, And Start Again has become renamed And Stuart Allen, from Jon Kirby's misreading of the handwritten title during rehearsals. We discuss at length who Stuart Allen might be – we all remember someone like him from school – but I reckon that And Stuart Allen is the title of a chat show, possibly like Graham Norton, in which Allen is host. The 'And' would possibly be preceded by three dots. This is what happens after a week in a small room with no natural light and a succession of eccentric musicians.

Jon is great to work with and is always coming up with alternative ideas for the songs. Often they're rejected, but it doesn't stop him suggesting. He's also always determined to get his best take, and is hardly ever satisfied, even remembering years later parts of songs he wishes he'd played better.

Martin got a lift with his drums back to London with his brother, and will be coming back early next week for the end of the session.

Today we got the electric guitar part done for And Start Again, and keyboards for And Start Again, Beautiful To Me, Special You, When The Sun Shines, This Is The Start, No Regrets, It Passed Me By, Village In My Mind, The Avenues, Over The Hills, So You Say and Schooldays.

Sunday 19 May 2002

Today is a day off, as the studio is booked for something else. We've done no vocals since Thursday, so it's looking like tomorrow will be vocal day, and I'm getting worried.

Spend the day trying to find something to do apart from reading the paper.

Monday 20 May 2002

This is vocal day. According to John I am the first singer he's met who actually wanted to start singing at 10 o'clock on a Monday morning.

We started with Special You and worked through the easiest ones in the order we had recorded the rhythm tracks, leaving When The Sun Shines until I felt warmed up, and the songs with high parts till last. Did the first four in 20 to 30 minutes each. When The Sun Shines and the later ones took a bit longer, although No Regrets was quick. Village In My Mind was difficult maybe because of the key – for some reason I find C hardest to sing in – or because of the high parts overlapping with the other voice.

Had a break for lunch and continued with Over The Hills. My energy was slightly lower and And Start Again was pieced together in sequence as we went through. Did It Passed Me By very quietly sitting down. Had some problems with tuning at that volume but it ended up OK. It was one of those that feels great when I'm actually doing it but when I listen back sounds awful.

John said the session was the best singing I had done with him, which was good because he's honest and it means we are still making progress.

Went on to do some percussion parts, then John started to set up the mix, starting with Beautiful To Me. We are going to add backing vocals, some second guitar parts and some percussion as we mix.

By the end of the day I felt exhausted and very stiff, as I'd been standing up most of the day.

Today we've done vocals for Special You, Schooldays, This Is The Start, The Avenues, When The Sun Shines, Village In My Mind, Over The Hills, No Regrets, And Start Again and It Passed Me By, and percussion for It Passed Me By and Village In My Mind, and the start of mixing for Beautiful To Me.

Tuesday 21 May 2002

This time we've added an extra day for mixing, making it four days. However, there are still some bits and pieces to add, so John finishes the mix of Beautiful To Me, after we've add an electric guitar part and backing vocals, and we do percussion, backing vocals and mixing for So You Say, and an electric guitar part, backing vocals and mixing for The Story Of My Life. With twelve songs, this means an average of only four hours to mix each song, although John has been doing some preparatory work along the way.

The last time we were in the studio was the first time we had worked with John mixing digitally, and there were lots of jokes about his use of the typewriter keyboard to edit the mixes. This time the jokes are hauled out again, and there are constant references to the amount of studio time John is dedicating to typing his personal correspondence.

Our lists on the studio walls are now nearly all crossed off, there are now just a few overdubs to add along the way as we mix.

John cracks on at the required rate, and we've got three done today.

Today we finish Special You (second electric guitar part, backing vocals and mixing), And Start Again (bells, first electric guitar part (the main riff) and mixing), and When The Sun Shines (third electric guitar part, backing vocals and mixing).

It's amazing how tiring it is just sitting and listening, and keeping our concentration up. I don't know how John manages it, as we only take a short lunch break, and he hasn't had a rest for days.

When The Sun Shines ends up sounding astonishing, and the chorus of Special You is massive. So far I'm happy with everything. The recorded parts, the raw material, are generally good, so with John's attention to detail and ability to get the best possible sound out of the material, I'm confident we'll end up with something very good. Usually there's something there I wish we'd done differently or am embarrassed about, but not so far.

Thursday 23 May 2002

Today we do second electric guitar and mixing for Schooldays, second and third electric guitar parts and mixing for This Is The Start, second electric guitar and mixing for No Regrets, and two electric guitar parts, percussion and mixing for Over The Hills.

With This Is The Start we decided to go for the guitar mix, with Richard playing the riffs between the verses, and the solo. We'll keep the trumpet version maybe for use in an alternative version.

Over The Hills sounds great, two guitar parts I hadn't really worked out before getting to the studio sound perfect together. I've always loved the guitars in The Chameleons, the way they drive their songs without using a rhythm guitar part, and wanted the kind of fluid, interweaving lines they create.

Friday 24 May 2002

This Is The End. We finish The Avenues (second electric guitar and mixing), Village In My Mind (electric guitar and mixing) and It Passed Me By (electric guitar and mixing). We've made it with a couple of hours to spare, and make DAT and safety copies, and a couple of CD copies to take away.

The album is as good as I had hoped, and better than I expected. I don't want to have to wait seven years before we do this again.

Tomorrow it's back to London and real life.